By MIKE MULHERN, Winston-Salem Journal

The moves by big NASCAR team owners Rick Hendrick and Joe Gibbs in the past few days to start paring their giant rosters of crewmen set off a wave of frantic job searching by a large number of crewmen over the weekend at Phoenix International Raceway.The fear is that next week, after the Homestead finale to the 10-month season, even more NASCAR job cuts will be made.

So did Carl Edwards finally rattle Jimmie Johnson's cage?"Sometimes you can have a little fun playing catch-up," Edwards said happily, after his eighth NASCAR win of the season, chopping Johnson's Sprint Cup tour lead almost in half with two races to go.

Whatever Carl Edwards and Jimmie Johnson have figured out with NASCAR's winged car, they're certainly not sharing any secrets.

When it comes to bad luck this season, the list of Sprint Cup drivers who can commiserate with each other is long.Start with Kyle Busch. Throw in Jeff Gordon and maybe teammate Dale Earnhardt. And Matt Kenseth and Denny Hamlin, and maybe Tony Stewart. And that's just at the front of the pack.

MARTINSVILLE, Va. -- Maybe these guys just have a different view of the world, but Jimmie Johnson's top three championship challengers -- Greg Biffle, Jeff Burton and Carl Edwards -- all said Sunday that they're still in the NASCAR title hunt.

CONCORD, N.C. -- Now that Tony Stewart has broken the ice, is Jeff Gordon going to win a race this season? Or Matt Kenseth?Gordon said, "I'm optimistic" about Saturday night's race here at Lowe's Motor Speedway, "because of how we performed at Kansas.

It was one heck of a finish, one of the best last laps of the season, and when the smoke cleared from the final miles of Sunday's Camping World RV 400, Jimmie Johnson, Carl Edwards and Greg Biffle had firm command of the Sprint Cup Chase for the Championship.

It looks as if Greg Biffle and crew chief Greg Erwin have their act together in these opening weeks of the NASCAR Sprint Cup playoffs.They're taking their game right at their toughest challengers, Jimmie Johnson and Carl Edwards.

LOS ANGELES -- NASCAR's venerable 358 engine is a dinosaur.It's been the staple power plant on the stock-car tour since the early 1970s, when NASCAR's Bill France Jr. decided to kill off those 427s, 428s and 429s as not so PR-plus, given the oil shock, and go to smaller engines.But who even knows what a carburetor is these days?

Clint Bowyer was last season's surprise in the Chase for the Sprint Cup Championship, coming from seemingly out of nowhere. He opened the 10-race playoffs with a victory at Loudon, N.H., and was the only guy who stayed in sight of Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon the rest of the way.This season?